Can state lawmaker overturn city voters?

Ninety-one percent of Tempe voters have decreed that no longer shall “dark money” operators be able to secretly sneak into the city and buy its elections.

One Arizona legislator — a guy who lives 105 miles from Tempe — disagrees and has commanded that Attorney General Mark Brnovich investigate.

“In the event of a conflict between a municipal ordinance and state law, state law controls,” Sen. Vince Leach wrote, in his complaint earlier this week to the AG’s office.

Never mind, apparently, that the state law — one Leach proposed, by the way — was passed specifically to butt into Tempe’s business and to counter the overwhelming will of Tempe’s voters.

Arizona’s Republican-run Legislature has gotten waaaay too big for its britches.

It’s not the first time our leaders have stuck their big honkers into local affairs, forcing the state’s top law enforcement official to drop everything and investigate at the whim of a single legislator.

Tucson was forced to stop destroying guns seized from gangbangers and other assorted criminals, to stop ensuring that the weapons won’t wind up back on the streets. This, at the request of Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley.

Bisbee was forced to lift its ban on plastic bags that litter the landscape and clog up the city’s waste disposal machinery, never mind that even the local business community supported the ban. This, at the request of Rep. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert.

Various legislators also have tried to interfere, with varying results, in Patagonia, Mohave County, Phoenix, Tucson, Sedona, Somerton, Sedona and Snowflake.

Now comes Leach, R-Saddlebrooke, out to override the will of Tempe voters about what information Tempe residents should have in Tempe elections.

A year ago, a whopping 91 percent of Tempe voters approved a city charter amendment requiring dark money disclosure in city elections. Well, you can imagine our leaders’ response.

Just as the Legislature previously had passed a law to stop Tucson from protecting guns ...

And passed a law to stop Bisbee from protecting the environment against plastic bags ...

Our leaders sprung into action within weeks of that Tempe election and passed a law to stop Tempe from protecting voters by requiring disclosure of anyone who spends $1,000 or more trying to influence a city election.

Now Leach is basically ordering the attorney general to investigate.

Brnovich has no choice but to jump to do Leach’s bidding.

A couple of years ago, as part of its efforts to protect guns in Tucson, the Legislature passed another handy law — one requiring the attorney general to drop everything and quickly investigate any time a single legislator complains that a city isn’t following a law.

If so and the city refuses to change its ways, the AG must file a special action with the Arizona Supreme Court, which in turn must set aside anything and everything it is working on to consider this pressing emergency.

So now comes Leach, who apparently lays awake nights in his Saddlebrooke bed worrying about elections in Tempe.

Tempe, however, may (read: should) have protection from Rep. Leach.

The law requires Brnovoch to investigate any ordinance “adopted or taken by the governing board” of a city. In this case, the voters approved the city’s Sunshine Ordinance. The City Council merely put it on the ballot.

So can a single legislator overturn the will of voters? “This is new and uncharted territory because the Tempe ordinance contains a voter-approved component,” AG spokesman Ryan Anderson told me. “Our office has consistently defended the will of Arizona voters, whether that be defending the minimum wage proposition or enforcing Proposition 300 when the universities were ignoring the law. The broader, complex legal question is, what happens if an elected body refers a ballot measure to the people for a vote that hypothetically violates the law?”

Leach told Arizona Capitol Times’ Ben Giles it makes no difference that voters approved the ordinance.

“Whether they did it by themselves or whatever, the city took the action, and that’s in violation, in my humble opinion, of the bill we passed,” Leach said.

The question is, should Leach’s not-so-humble opinion outweigh 91 percent of Tempe voters on an issue affecting only their city?

Or the 87 percent of Phoenix voters who in November passed the same ordinance outlawing dark money in Phoenix city elections?

What’s astonishing here is that we even have to ask the question.